I was thinking along the same lines: there is quite a bit of inertia in the hiring process. Especially when hiring people whose qualifications are in demand. If management waits for said "mass exodus" to set in, they might have a very difficult and painful gap to fill.

Post
by Omychron » 15 May 2018, 22:02
jan_olieslagers wrote: ↑
15 May 2018, 20:29
Jetter wrote: ↑
15 May 2018, 20:09
The problem is that the people that choose to stay strike.
Those who strike today will leave tomorrow, if nothing changes, or not enough. They can, after all, pilots are in demand worldwide.
Add to that one of the reasons of strike is lack of crews. (and thus overfilled rosters)
Some have been leaving lately (especially contractors), looking for better wages and/or a more comfortable life. (quite often both at the same time)

T

So, how can this rosterproblem be solved?

1.hire more pilots (unlikely as costincreasing, especially when combined with higher salaries for current force)
2.have more flights done by 3d party airlines à la Cityjet,BMI
3. have more flights done by Eurowings-Gemany
4. Skip destinations
5. reduce frequency on some routes
6. in combination with the above,introduce some A321's with more seats on selected routes

Hereunder a list of the flights that will be operated on 16 May, the second day of the strike. One will notice that two African flights are on the list. Besides the flights operated by CityJet, bmi Regional and ASL Airlines France, there are again a few flights mainly to tourist destinations, probably because of the lack of alternatives and the agreement with Thomas Cook.

I understand that the pilots and all SN staff are nervous about the plans of LH/EW since they are not in the know, this is the best way to lower staff motivation, which can be a strategy, not saying it is the case here.

On the other hand we live in a market economy and SN is a privately owned business. If the pilots don't like their work conditions, they are free to choose for would be greener pastures. If they do, SN - like FR did - will feel the squeeze on its core business: making profits from flying planes. SN will have no choice but to improve working conditions if they cannot find replacement candidates at the same conditions, which they seem to consider reasonable otherwise they wouldn't go thru the current pains. Maybe they're wrong, maybe not.

The majority of passengers nowadays are price driven and they will forget about the strike the next time they compare again. I trust SN are taking the utmost care in providing suitable solutions to their most important passengers.

On the other hand we live in a market economy and SN is a privately owned business. If the pilots don't like their work conditions, they are free to choose for would be greener pastures. If they do, SN - like FR did - will feel the squeeze on its core business: making profits from flying planes. SN will have no choice but to improve working conditions if they cannot find replacement candidates at the same conditions, which they seem to consider reasonable otherwise they wouldn't go thru the current pains. Maybe they're wrong, maybe not.

Careful what you wish for, scraping the bottom of the barrel whilst recruiting pilots could have safety implications.

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

Not to worry... I'm sure that eventually Norwegian will come to Vienna (and Brussels) with brand new aircraft and offer long haul routes. Its pretty amazing to see what routes Norwegian already operates from the New York area airports (JFK. EWR and SWF)... probably close to 20 European cities so its just a matter of time before BRU & VIE are connected as well. You snooze, you loose

The second conciliation meeting between the Brussels Airlines management and the trade unions ended without an agreement, after more than fifteen hours of negotiations to resolve the social conflict among the pilots.

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

Quite a lame excuse for not allow Austrian to renew its longhaul fleet. If you don't invest in new(er) aircraft, you lose. Austrian has a total of 12 longhaul aircraft, with an average age of 22.2y (for the B767) resp. 17.5y (for the B777). The 767 will have to go in a few years.

In my opinion, Spohr is using this kind of propaganda speech to prepare for the degradation of Austrian to a fully local-only carrier, stripping them of any longhaul capacity. It's the typical German way of having their "allies" do all the "dirty work" for them quite like house servants - and it doesn't make 'em LH-Krauts look sympathethic even for a second... but they have the money, so they can call the shots, unfortunately.

Best regards,
Viktor
(Budapest-born, Vienna-raised, working in Brussels)

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines does not have strong enough finances to renew its long-haul fleet in the near future, Lufthansa chairman & CEO Carsten Spohr told ATW. “Ten percent of our [Lufthansa Group] aircraft is based in Austria, but only 4% of the group’s profit is generated there. The refinancing for a new intercontinental fleet for Austrian is unaffordable right now,” Spohr said. He added that Austrian has not fully developed its potential and there is ...

In my book there are 2 ways to run an airline....
You can either invest/expand wisely... you have to spend money to make money, thats a fact in any business... and you can get OS and SN to operate A350s or 787s and be able to offer a top product....
Or you can say they don't make enough money so they don't expand and they continue flying old A330s and 767s.

Its pretty clear that Spohr is only interested in LH, EW and LX... in the case of SN and OS he just wants the BRU and VIE traffic but not the airlines... so he comes up with a super lame excuse of no new planes...

Now he has a lovely excuse to wrap up things with SN... let the pilots strike and bring the airline down so EW can take things they want over... and the unions are falling for this trap... Too bad but anyway when the Belgian politicians made this agreement with LH they pretty much sealed the deal of the airline...

As quite rightly pointed out on this forum before, Something that you sell, doesn't belong to you anymore and you have no say anymore on what the new owner does with it.

In Belgium, we unfortunately live in an "environment" where politicians do not take measures to develop aviation and where investors have no appetite for airlines.

SN's pilots strike will not change anything. Whether the strikes will give a reason to LH/CS to "close" SN is to a large extent irrelevant, since everything has already been decided in Germany. A few people know and till now have managed to keep it secret. I fully understand that pilots and cabin crew demand respect and reasonable working conditions.

With CS's latest declaration, there are two main questions which remain open imho :
- what's going to happen to OS ;
- what's going to happen to SN's Africa flights.

- SN pilots would be prepared to accept the same pay/working conditions + perks as TUI pilots ;
- There would be a shortage of 12 pilots for the summer ;
- Some 10 pilots have already left to work for other airlines;
- Some 10 pilots will also leave to work for AF ;
- Negotiations between management and pilots would resume tomorrow.
- Is management really aware of the situation ?

My very personal answer to this last question is : yes. On instructions from Germany, CF and current SN management team will led SN bleed to death (sorry for this harsh conclusion).